


salut d'amour

by lanyon



Series: The Portland Cellist Series [3]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers, This is a broke-it-even-more, This is not a fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, there must be explanation and apologies, even for the unforgiveable. (There is a cellist, in Portland.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <b>[spoilers for the movie]</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	salut d'amour

She never believes that Phil is an analyst; he travels more than she does, more than she ever did even when she was at the height of her career and she had been in high demand. Her mother has kept the newspaper clippings that proclaimed her to be the best young virtuosa cellist since Jacqueline du Pre, with considerably fewer issues (God rest her). 

She has never believed that he is an analyst but she humours him. He comes home late every evening so tired, and so worn, and it is no lie to trust him. She trusts him. His eyes are kind and his touch gentle.

 She will always remember that his eyes are kind. She doesn’t have many photographs of him. There’s one of them at the top of the Empire State Building and he’s smiling, broadly, like he hardly ever does, and there’s one of him, frowning at his laptop, and saying that the numbers don’t add up.

She moves to Portland because her mother is ill and he promises to visit when he can. She believes him. His smile is heartbreaking and she can only wonder at his surprise. She believes in him, she says, and it bears repetition and his expression is a happy one and the calluses on his fingers are not from pens or computers or musical instruments (she is a cellist and she knows this much, at least). 

The job in Stuttgart is last minute. The Breidablik Quartet are short a cello and her mother says she is feeling better and the Met lends her Francesca. It is some kind of fate. She texts him to tell him that she is going to Germany. He texts back in an instant and tells her to have a good time and to take care. 

She smiles (and then a man who is a god removes the eye of their benefactor and she runs with everyone else, still clinging to Francesca because the cello is worth more than her life and she drops her bow and there is a man with a quiver running too and his eyes are blue like ice, fit to make her shiver and there is Captain America and she thinks that she’ll have to text him but he texts her within half an hour and asks if she is okay, if she’s well, that he saw it on the news and she knows that no news station can have gotten footage so quickly).

She is ready for the call, when it comes. It is not a call; it is a home visit. Her mother sits in the front room, in the sun, a rug wrapped around her knees while she receives her guests in the kitchen. Captain America sits at the table, perched on one of the small kitchen stools, his knee jumping up and down, and the man with the ice-cold eyes is here and she shivers, though his eyes aren’t so cold anymore. He doesn’t look at her. The beautiful red-headed woman says that Phil died to bring them together; Phil died and they knew they had to fight.

With steady hands, she pours their coffee and asks what kind of people they are, that it takes the death of a good man to make them do their duty.

**Author's Note:**

> +Francesca is a Stradivarius, living in the Met.  
> +Breidablik is for the home of Baldr, in Norse mythology.  
> +Salut D'Amour is Edward Elgar, occasionally arranged for cello.  
> +And this draws a line under my cello series. <3


End file.
